this thread is to track and keep up with current and next generation games' polycounts and texture limits [for reference in the Unofficial/Micro Game Art Challenges]. please feel free to post and add to it [and please have a webpage or some proof to backup your post].

!do not edit your old posts [unless for corrections]. if you have new poly limits, just create a new post.

!this is for ANY system, ANY engine, and ANY genre of game. the goal is to make a one-stop-thread for people looking for real, polycount/texture limits of current and next generation.

Here are the guidelines we're using in building content for our next Unreal Engine 3 based game.

Characters

For every major character and static mesh asset, we build two versions of the geometry: a renderable mesh with unique UV coordinates, and a detail mesh containing only geometry. We run the two meshes through the Unreal Engine 3 preprocessing tool and generate a high-res normal map for the renderable mesh, based on analyzing all of the geometry in the detail mesh.

* Renderable Mesh: We build renderable meshes with 3,000-12,000 triangles, based on the expectation of 5-20 visible characters in a game scene.
* Detail Mesh: We build 1-8 million triangle detail meshes for typical characters. This is quite sufficient for generating 1-2 normal maps of resolution 2048x2048 per character.
* Bones: The highest LOD version of our characters typically have 100-200 bones, and include articulated faces, hands, and fingers.

Normal Maps & Texture maps

We are authoring most character and world normal maps and texture maps at 2048x2048 resolution. We feel this is a good target for games running on mid-range PC's in the 2006 timeframe. Next-generation consoles may require reducing texture resolution by 2X, and low-end PC's up to 4X, depending on texture count and scene complexity. Environments
Typical environments contain 1000-5000 total renderable objects, including static meshes and skeletal meshes. For reasonable performance on current 3D cards, we aim to keep the number of visible objects in any given scene to 300-1000 visible objects. Our larger scenes typically peak at 500,000 to 1,500,000 rendered triangles. Lights

There are no hardcoded limits on light counts, but for performance we try to limit the number of large-radius lights affecting large scenes to 2-5, as each light/object interaction pair is costly due to the engine's high-precision per-pixel lighting and shadowing pipeline. Low-radius lights used for highlights and detail lighting on specific objects are significantly less costly than lights affecting the full scene.

There are no fixed rules in determining how many polygons you use in your model, or how much texture resolution you'll use in your materials. There are upper limits of engine capability, (10,000 polygons/model, 17,433 vertices and 2048 texture size) but these aren't usually going to be what you're shooting for. You'll need to consider how many of the character, vehicle, or prop you're making will be on screen. If you'd like dozens of them on screen at any given time, you'll have a different budget than if you'd only like to see one of them ever on screen at a time. With humanoid characters, especially for multiplayer use, you shouldn't need to go over 4000 polygons to get a character that has enough detail to accurately describe the form, bend properly at the joints, and have enough edges to light properly. Of course you can have more than that, but with normal mapping, and high res textures, you shouldn't really need to.

Quote:The polycount goes from about 600 polys for the palette to 1800 on average for the others,I don't have the exact numbers because it was a while ago The textures were painted at 2048x2048 (diffuse,normal, specular) but of course they were scaled down for the final game content, some of them even to 512x512. For all the forniture there are also destroyed states and one damage texture used for these parts.

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (xbox360)
polycounts were 8000 tris for some of the larger weapons like rocket launchers (models of the weapons that you see yourself holding from first person view). The most detailed vehichles were 15,000 tris.

Follow Us On:

The CGSociety

The CGSociety is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists. The CGS supports artists at every level by offering a range of services to connect, inform, educate and promote digital artists worldwide. More about us on TheArtSociety.com